Love shows us families and individuals living in temporary accommodation in the run-up to Christmas. Tradition often contains shows with even the smallest tip of the Yuletide hat in a November-December run. Love is not the sort of show that can be contained, however. It feels boundless, and essential.

The director puts it best. Zeldin told The Stage “thousands of children are homeless at Christmas. I felt that this situation, of a family on the edge of society living in fear of the next day, was a powerful metaphor for a broader set of feelings that permeate the atmosphere in the world right now.”

The action—or lack thereof, one might say—follows a family headed by father Dean (Luke Clarke) and step-mother Emma (Janet Etuk); Colin and Barbara, a Brummie bloke and his elderly mother; Tharwa (Hind Swareldahab), who has recently arrived from the Sudan, separated from her children; and Adnan, from Syria. We get a glimpse into their lives. Colin and Barbara have been here for almost twelve months, Dean and Emma for a few weeks.

The production is slow, and quiet—neither of those descriptors are meant pejoratively—which is an important decision for a show where realism is paramount. We watch the kettle boil, and eggs cook. We see meals eaten, and dishes washed. Through this, the audience are trained to take note of the mundane, to look into it, not searching for plot, but letting the narrative gradually reveal itself to us.

All these mundanities unfold in the fully-functioning dining hall that takes up most of the stage, with communal bathroom, dorms and exterior hallway all built with impressive, realistic detail around it. There is a strange splendour in seeing such an ordinary space recreated for the theatre. Having the house lights connected to the lights of the dining hall, and plenty of patrons sat in chairs on stage, could have felt like a cheap ploy to get us on-side with the characters. But it works.

The cast are consistently excellent. Nick Holder and Anna Calder-Marshall, as Colin and Barbara, are phenomenal, and offer the audience a sense of history, of lived-in-ness, in each of their exchanges, both with each other and the other members of the cast. Ammar Haj Ahmad, in a much smaller role, as Adnan, is also wonderful, turning comic relief into poetry.

On the night that I saw the show, Darcey Brown played Paige, and Bobby Stallwood played Jason. Audiences might expect young actors to disrupt the flow of something as naturalistic as Love. The characters sound like real kids—funny, silly, moody—and both actors handled the theatrical ebb and flow excellently; their timing was right, they were expressive, and convincing in their relationships with Clarke and Etuk. The kids also got the major laughs of the night.

Dare I use the phrase “slice of life,” but it so perfectly encapsulates the feeling that Love leaves you with: that we have only seen but a slither of what we might.

It leaves you yearning for more. Will Tharwa get to see her kids soon? Will Emma give birth while in the hostel? Where did Adnan go? I could watch a six-part Netflix series following these characters, though of course, that’s not the point. Easy resolutions are not what Zeldin is offering us here.

I saw a Guardian review suggest that the show only amounts to inducing pity in its audience. What about empathy and respect, rather than pity?

In between the few words, and beneath the softness, there is a leonine magic here, an honesty hard to formulate on-stage, which roars out. Beautifully quiet, and quietly beautiful, Love should be on your list of shows to see in 2017.     ★★★★★     Will Amott    31^st January 2016